BY AMANCAI BIRABEN
The City of Angels, a metropolis of freeways and traffic, has a newly discovered species named in its honor: The Los Angeles Thread Millipede.
The tiny arthropod was found just underground by naturalists at a Southern California hiking area — near a freeway, a Starbucks and an Oakley sunglasses store.
About the length of a paperclip but skinny as pencil lead, it’s translucent and sinuous like a jellyfish tentacle. The creature burrows four inches below ground, secretes unusual chemicals and is blind, relying on hornlike antennas protruding from its head to find its way.
Under a microscope, the millipede with its 486 legs and helmet-like head resembles a creature in a Hollywood monster film.
“It’s amazing to think these millipedes are crawling in the inner cracks and crevices between little pieces of rock below our feet in Los Angeles,” said entomologist Paul Marek of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute. He was part of the research team that included scientists from West Virginia University, and the University of California, Berkeley.
Their findings on the species, whose scientific name is Illacme socal, were published June 21 in the journal ZooKeys. The species’ vernacular name is Los Angeles Thread Millipede.
“It goes to show that there’s this undiscovered planet underground,” Marek added.
It joins other millipedes found in the state, including one that until recently held the crown for the most legs of any creature ever recorded — a whopping 750 limbs. It is aptly named Illacme plenipes, Latin for “in highest fulfillment of feet.” Discovered in 1926 in a small area in Northern California, it was believed to be the leggiest creature on earth until 2021 when a millipede with 1,306 legs was found in Australia.
Millipedes feed on dead organic material and without them people would be “up to our necks” in it, Marek said.
“By knowing something about the species that fulfill these really important ecological…
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